Proceeding With Caution in a Trump Presidency

As we approach the end of 2016, counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds til the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, this year I will proceed with caution. I’m sure Times Square will be, as usual, bursting at the seams, and New Year’s Eve will still be full of the usual excitement for the year to come. Couples will have their celebratory kiss and we’ll sing another chorus of Auld Lang Syne.

But this year, at least for many of us, the arrival of 2017 will also come with relief in letting go of the massive dumpster fire that was 2016.

2016 – the year that brought forth detestable politics locally such as HB2 in my home state of North Carolina, which set the NCGOP into perpetual motion of a power-hungry, power-grabbing cycle. Most recently, they’ve held special sessions at the tax-payers cost of $42,000 per day to essentially strip incoming Governor Roy Cooper (D) of his power to govern the state, while also ignoring the loud, unwavering will of the people.

I have friends who sat in on the sessions in our Legislative Building and tweeted throughout. One local news station even did a Facebook Live Feed broadcast. The behavior of our representatives was all disturbing, to say the very least. But I was most disgusted by the fact that one republican representative in particular continued to look up at the gallery of protesters, grinning at them like a spoiled toddler who has just done something very bad but knows his mom won’t spank him in public.

In NC, the summer was no better than the contentious spring that heralded HB2. On a larger scale, many of us watched in terror as the media outlets, who were once laughing at Donald Trump were now giving him a free daily platform.

And then the summer just got relentless. There was the murder of The Voice’s young superstar Christina Grimmie, as she signed autographs after her concert in Orlando. Without even a moment to comprehend her loss came the Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting – the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. This was an act of terror against our LGBTQ+ community, and most especially, the Latinx LGBTQ+ community who regularly gathered in a city that was otherwise accepting and embracing of all. And let’s not forget that in the same week, in a parent’s worst nightmare come true, there was the DisneyWorld gator attack that took the life of a two-year-old Lane Graves, who was snatched away suddenly while playing along the edge of the water, his parents nearby at arms length.

Earlier in June there was Harambe’s death at the Cincinnati Zoo. That, coupled with the Disney gator attack saw new life breathed into a somewhat dormant culture of online parent-shaming. Not someone to usually unfriend someone on social media over angry posts, I found myself doing just that when a very well-to-do, well-traveled, well-educated friend from my past publicly posted a parent-shaming diatribe about Lane Graves’ mourning parents, stating that they should “sit their white privileged asses down and shut up.”

Now, I know all about white privilege, trust me. I have it. I write about it. I speak about it. But this was not the time or place to call “privilege,” for there’s nothing steeped in privilege about the loss of a child, whether it happened at a Disney Resort or not.

We lost tremendous citizens of influence such as author Harper Lee, well-respected journalists and media figures Morley Safer, George Curry (champion of black press), and the legendary Gwen Ifil. We’ve lost prominent playwrights, tech innovators, and tremendous academic figures. We lost autism advocate, Suzanne Wright, and Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel. We lost leaders, politicians, and military figures.

Perhaps the most massive amount of loss occurred this year, though, in the artistic community of music and TV/film, especially those folks who resonated with my generation and influenced our formative years: David Bowie, Prince, Sharon Jones, Leonard Cohen, Alan Rickman, Gary Shandling, Doris Roberts, Garry Marshall, Gene Wilder, Alexis Arquette, Florence Henderson, Alan Thicke, and just recently over Christmas, George Michael. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

And, dear God, lest we forget, Aleppo, and the ongoing Syrian civil war. The images are coming at us with such furious speed that we feel we can do nothing except throw money towards organizations like Doctors Without Borders, and that’s if we have money to give in the first place, which many of us lack, living paycheck to paycheck.

It all makes you want to just throw your hands up in despair, or at least, live in your own little bubble and choose to stay happy. Unfortunately, bubbles do burst over time, so the sooner we face what’s happening, the better. In fact, the minute we stop talking about the current state of American politics is the minute it becomes normalized, and let me remind everyone that what is happening right now in the American political scene is not normal. It is not normal for America. We should be shouting it everywhere: “THIS IS NOT NORMAL.”

And then we have ultra-conservative people who are telling us bleeding-heart liberals, in response to a Trump presidency, to “suck it up buttercup, stop acting like it’s the end of the world.” It seems like they’re gloating until you realize that they are saying this out of experience. They learned, after eight years of President Obama, that they were wrong. The world did not end with Obama as President, in fact, quite a few things got better under his presidency. There’s a comprehensive, objective website that lists just a handful of those things, all fact-checked for accuracy, and here are some of them:

And even though they doubted his national origin over the birth certificate issue, ultimately, after eight years these same people realized that Obama had never once showed up on their doorstep to take their guns away. They learned that lesson. Unfortunately, it took them eight years to learn it, and unfortunately, they are floating on the coattails of that newfound enlightenment as we head into a Trump presidency, that, let us not forget, IS NOT NORMAL.

Though the political climate is not normal, I definitely wouldn’t call 2016 the worst year ever. But, 2016 has been more than unkind in every arena. In fact, at least in America, the whole year has been a 3-ring circus with Trump as ringmaster. Thus, I will approach 2017 with extreme caution.

I’m not backing down from my platform: I will continue running discussion groups and advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, especially with regard to transgender and gender creative people, who need us now more than ever with the likes of Trump’s apparent senior staff – Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos, Steve Bannon, and Ken Klukowski – all who have a rich history of anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs and actions. Trump can very well set back LGBTQ+ rights by placing these politicians in positions of extreme power, so it’s absolutely necessary that we do not normalize this.

I will continue volunteering my time with the marginalized trans and gender creative community, writing about them, and doing what I can to help educate others on this largely ignored and misunderstood population of humans. But I will proceed with caution, because I can’t help but think that as we approach the sixty second countdown to midnight on New Year’s Eve, with all the thrill and anticipation that an impending new year heralds, that we are much like cattle being herded to slaughter. We have no idea what’s in front of us, but that doesn’t mean we should go into it expecting status quo.

Blog Post Categories

Search

Martie Todd Sirois (pronounced 'sir-ROY') is a writer whose work has been frequently featured on HuffPost, Medium, Scary Mommy, and several other media outlets. Martie is also the mom who wrote & posted a letter on social media in 2016 that went viral, thanking the tween girls' clothing store Justice. In the turbulent aftermath of her state's notorious anti-LGBTQ law, HB2 (the "bathroom bill"), Martie wanted to thank Justice for giving her (then, gender creative son) a wonderful and affirming experience despite local government trying to mandate public accommodations (including bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities) to be gender segregated exclusively by the sex indicated on one's birth certificate. She hoped by making her Facebook post public, she could let her local LGBTQ+ community know that this store was an affirming environment for TGNC kids. She never expected it to go viral, but within a few days of publishing it, that letter had been shared over 25,000 times, and two years later, continues to be circulated widely around the internet, with new people discovering it and seeking Martie out to relay how much her letter touched them for various reasons.
Martie has also been featured on BuzzFeed, Upworthy, That Odd Mom, Spoke for Red Tricycle, The Good Men Project, Today Show Parenting Community, and many other media outlets. Some of her work has been translated and syndicated worldwide.
While she has enjoyed a 30+ year “hobby career” performing on stage as an award-winning actress in both musical and non-musical theatre, Martie now enjoys using her free time to write about any and everything - but mostly about life with three children, the youngest of whom has been gender non-conforming since the age of 2 1/2 years old. In the process of learning how best to support a TGNC child who avidly swims against the current, Martie has also unwittingly (but lovingly) become a speaker, educator, and advocate for the LGBTQ and especially, the TGNC (trans and gender non-conforming) communities.
As someone who "writes for therapy" and has kept numerous journals all her life, Martie got her first public and professional writing experience when she read some of her blog material out loud for the first time ever, in an audition, and was then cast in the national live reading event series, Listen To Your Mother (RDU, 2016). For eight years, LTYM gave local writers across all 50 states and Canada a platform to read their original work on motherhood (or about mothers) before a live audience, and to have their readings enshrined forever on the YouTube LTYM channel. LTYM opened up many opportunities for Martie, starting with sharing some of her work on WUNC Radio's (NPR affiliate, NC) "The State of Things" with Frank Stasio. (LTYM, founded by Ann Imig, concluded its eight-year run with a national series finale in 2017.)
For her writing, Martie has also been interviewed by John Fugelsang on SiriusXM Insight's "Tell Me Everything, With John Fugelsang;" by The Washington Post; by Kind World of WBUR Radio (NPR, Boston); and she particpated with her husband and TGNC child in "StoryCorps," the prestigious Peabody award-winning podcast that shares important unscripted conversations, with weekly broadcasts debuting on NPR's "Morning Edition." Martie's family's story was one of the recorded stories chosen by StoryCorps to be publicly aired in or around September of 2017.
Martie is also the founder and leader of S.E.A.R.CH. (Safe Environmient for the Acceptance of Rainbow CHildren), a program of the LGBT Center of Raleigh, that serves as a playgroup for TGNC children ages 12 and under, and as a discussion group for parents. S.E.A.R.CH. also has a secret Facebook group which currently allows over 260 members, from all over the country and beyond, to celebrate, and have connections with other parents & caregivers supportively raising TGNC children.
Martie has proudly served on The Family Equality Council, (Southern Advisory Board), and greatly enjoys opportunities to guest lecture or speak on gender, inclusiveness, gender diversity, and the issues facing TGNC people. She has presented on these topics at a range of locations, from public universities like NCSU, to more private settings among public school guidance counselor meetings. Martie also spoke on a panel that presented on the topic of creating safe & inclusive spaces for LGBTQ+ students, in the Safe Schools of NC's annual Conference for Educators.
When not working or writing, Martie loves living and volunteering in her hometown in NC with her husband, Matt, their three beautiful children, and their two peculiar but lovable pets.
Visit her online at: www.gendercreativelife.com
Twitter: @TheMartieSirois